scientist: we don't don't know jack

"Though galaxies look larger than atoms and elephants appear to outweigh ants, some physicists have begun to suspect that size differences are illusory. Perhaps the fundamental description of the universe does not include the concepts of “mass” and “length,” implying that at its core, nature lacks a sense of scale.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of SimonsFoundation.org whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

This little-explored idea, known as scale symmetry, constitutes a radical departure from long-standing assumptions about how elementary particles acquire their properties. But it has recently emerged as a common theme of numerous talks and papers by respected particle physicists. With their field stuck at a nasty impasse, the researchers have returned to the master equations that describe the known particles and their interactions, and are asking: What happens when you erase the terms in the equations having to do with mass and length?"

...........................

Nature, at the deepest level, may not differentiate between scales. With scale symmetry, physicists start with a basic equation that sets forth a massless collection of particles, each a unique confluence of characteristics such as whether it is matter or antimatter and has positive or negative electric charge. As these particles attract and repel one another and the effects of their interactions cascade like dominoes through the calculations, scale symmetry “breaks,” and masses and lengths spontaneously arise.

Similar dynamical effects generate 99 percent of the mass in the visible universe. Protons and neutrons are amalgams — each one a trio of lightweight elementary particles called quarks. The energy used to hold these quarks together gives them a combined mass that is around 100 times more than the sum of the parts. “Most of the mass that we see is generated in this way, so we are interested in seeing if it’s possible to generate all mass in this way,” said Alberto Salvio, a particle physicist at the Autonomous University of Madrid and the co-author of a recent paper on a scale-symmetric theory of nature.

.............

"“We’re not in a position where we can afford to be particularly arrogant about our understanding of what the laws of nature must look like,” said Michael Dine, a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz,"

.......

could "scale symmetry be s/t = straight (or t/s, I get these mixed up)

First, "scale symmetry" is inherent to the Reciprocal System because everything is based on scalar motion. (If you don't understand the RS "scalar" concept, I just put out a short paper on it, here: RS2-104: Scalar Motion). That's why you only need some simple postulates to describe everything from the smallest particle to the largest galaxy--same rules, regardless of scale. With particles, the aggregate size is 1, so "what you see is what you get," but as aggregates get larger, you have to resort to statistical means to determine the net behavior (although, with sufficient computing power down to the atom, you could predict the precise behavior of an aggregate).

The only differences in behavior of "breakaway particles" will be due to the nature of the "container." Particles do not have sufficient displacement to have a gravitational field (the gravitational limit is at the unit space boundary--see the chapter on Inter-atomic distances in BPOM). Once you reach helium, you have sufficient displacement so the gravitational limit extends beyond the unit space boundary and creates that inward motion we call "gravity."

There are three kinds of "containers" in the RS, based on what Larson refers to as "units of motion." The first, low speed, is your conventional, 3D gravitating environment. The second is "equivalent space" where motion in time is expressed as an oppositely-directed motion in space. For example, the electron orbitals of an atom are an expression of the electric rotation of the atom in equivalent space--in other words, the electron, being a cosmic particle, is temporal in nature, so it shows up as a wavefunction in equivalent space, instead of a particle. This is why "orbitals" can be described using wavefunctions. The third container is the ultra-high speed range, where a second spatial dimension acts concurrently with equivalent space, producing effects such as the astronomical "jets" and solar prominences (thredules--actually vortices, because the 2nd spatial dimension is linearly outward and the equivalent space is rotational, so you end up with a coil shape that usually degenerates into a vortex as the component particles slow down to intermediate speeds--if you want to see ultra-high speed motion in action on the sun: Tornado Season on the Sun ).

When a ship leaves the heliosphere (delimited by the gravitational limit) it enters the "scalar zone" that Larson discusses in UOM (page 208). But since it is composed of gravitating atoms, it essentially carries with it its own "3D space" zone with its own gravitational limit, which Sci-Fi refers to as a "warp bubble." So particles inside and out will behave the same; the only difference will be when a particle leaves the spaceship-o-sphere and enters the scalar zone.